A cup of coffee
by SILENTSANCTUARY
Summary: Five years later, the memory of Roxas still follows Olette despite her attempts to move on from the past. Maybe it's because the memory of blond hair, blue eyes & checkerboard shirts refuses to be forgotten. OLETTE'S POINT OF VIEW ; ROXASXOLETTE FANDOM


[First OlettexRoxas fanfiction! This is dedicated to my friend, Garnie. I still think it is pretty good but I'm going to edit the end tomorrow because I'm rushing to put this all on fanfiction before my dad wakes up. By the way, this is written in Olette's point of view.]

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I've always regarded my life to be a continuous and unchanging series of cycles like the slow spin of cream intermixing with the black coffee, slowly turning the color lighter and lighter until the coffee is cold and the color of soft caramel. Sometimes I would be sitting near the cold frosted window of Starbucks, spinning my spoon around the black waters of my espresso, while I reminisced about blond hair, blue eyes and checkerboard shirts, thinking that it has been five years already and still, I was clinging onto those memories I had of him, unable to let them go.

I am twenty-one now and most of the adult figures in my life such as my teachers and my parents could confidently say that they are proud of me – for all my academic achievements, for all the obstacles I have crossed. It hasn't been easy, these past five years, first graduating high school with my diploma and then starting the arduous process of getting my master's degree. In another year or so, I would walk out of college with a master's degree in architecture, which was never really my passion or my calling in life. I had simply gone into that field for the high salary and the firms that offered me an open job once I completed my studies.

It was a sad reality, realizing that your dreams of being a fashion designer were crushed because your parents refused to support you if you decided to major in that area. Then once you've thrown away all those notebooks filled with countless drawings of designs for future fashion you hoped of debuting, reality sets in. Isn't it more important to get through in life with a secure and promising salary, than chase after your dreams like scattered feathers in the wind?

I drop the spoon into my coffee cup with a clatter and take out my cell phone to check the time. It is still early morning and classes don't start until an hour later. I sigh, putting my phone back into my pocket, picking up my cup to take a sip of the already cold and undesirable coffee. I flip through the pages of magazine I had in my hands, stopping only to admire photographs of models posing in articles of clothing. A dull pang in my heart would result from looking at these pictures as if some part of me still longed for the dream that I had when I was a teenager who spent her allowance on buying countless issues of fashion magazines such as Vogue and Elle until they accumulated in tittering stacks near her bed and her mother threatened to throw them away.

I roll up the magazine and throw it into the garbage can nearby. Later, I regret doing this and gingerly pick it up among discarded coffee cups and napkins, shoving it deep inside my backpack. I got up to leave, making sure that my table was free of debris and spilled coffee so that Kairi, my friend who worked here wouldn't have to clean up after myself.

I push the door open and immediately I am welcomed by a gust of wind blowing snowflakes into my hair. I look up at the gray Manhattan sky, watching flakes of snow drifting down from above. Images of blond hair, blue eyes and checkered board shirts immediately pop into my mind. They were immediately followed by another wave of memories that cause me to go down on my knees, hugging my legs as if this was the only way of protecting myself from the images that were starting to replay themselves in my head.

A few minutes later, Kairi steps out from the coffee shop, looking worried. She is still wearing her Starbucks uniform – green apron and all, holding a broom in her hands as if she was just sweeping the floor when she saw me sitting by myself in front of the entrance. She bent down, placed a comforting hand on my shoulder and said sorrowfully,

"Olette, you have to let him go."

I weep, tears freezing onto my cheeks on their journey down. Kairi wraps me in her arms, murmuring words of comfort, protecting me from myself. For a long time, we sit on the front entrance of Starbucks, just watching the wind blow snowflakes in small spirals as my body stops shaking and my mind slowly starts to take the memories I had tried so hard to bury and replay them, one step, one memory at a time.

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**The first memory.**

I remember we would spend hours in that small coffee shop downtown where we would have our cup of coffee everyday. Now if you were to go back to the place where it all started – in that coffee shop called "Simple Pleasures," [an ideal hippie place that played music in the 70's] you wouldn't find it anymore. Two years ago, I found out that the owner had sold the property to some contractor who turned the place into a flower shop. Sometimes I still go there, not to buy any flowers, but because part of me still sees his ghost there, refusing to be forgotten.

Our cup of coffee together became a daily routine. Sometimes I would try to think of the little details – how his hands gripped the mug, how he preferred his coffee strong while I liked it decaf and countless other little actions that I did not document or remember until now. But no matter how many times I tried to remember these small things, the memory came back blurred and confusing. This is the trick that time plays on you.

Nowadays, I find myself wandering back to the places we used to go, the landmarks that had been so important in my youth. Sometimes at night, I would drive to the flower shop that used to be the coffee shop we went to, and still see even under the dim lights that illuminated the sidewalk, his face looking back me – unchanged after all those years.

**The second memory.**

Let's backtrack a little. [The memories halt for a second before they find the correct memory I am looking for. An invisible hand slides it into an imaginary video player and the screen of my memories flickers before a series of motion images start to reveal themselves one by one.]

The snowfall is slow and steady, each individual flake of snow taking its time to reach the ground where it melted upon contact. One melts into the dregs of coffee in my cup and then another one melts on the palm of my hand, causing a cold trickle of water to slide down my skin.

"It's cold." I found myself whispering, watching the cars pass us by. It was late at night and the shop owner had kicked us out because it was closing time, but it didn't matter. We drank our last cup of coffee in the cold, each of us reluctant to go home even though it _was_ 11 at night and we were way past our curfews.

"It is," he replied. Taking the empty cup from my hands, he wrapped me in a warm embrace. His lips slanted over mines in what turned out to be the very last time.

**The third memory.**

[The memories halt again and this time, I already had the specific memory picked out. I hesitate to play it, but I know I must because if I don't, I'll spend maybe another five years trying to avoid it, trying to plan my life around it. The invisible hand pops it into the video player. At first the screen is blank and I panic – thinking that I've might have forgotten, but surprise, the memory starts playing itself.]

My mom had left a total of twenty-six missed calls on my cell phone and two voice messages, each a half an hour apart but both demanding that I come home immediately and telling me of the severe consequences that would await me once I returned. I turned off the cell phone after listening to the last voice message, cringing at the intensity of my mom's rage.

"Let me guess. Your mom is having a bf."

"Bf?" I looked puzzled for a moment. "My mom isn't getting a boyfriend…"

He grinned. "Bf. Bitch fit."

I laugh weakly at the joke even although the matter was serious. My mom had explicitly said that if I didn't come back in the next half hour, she would be forced to call the police. He immediately sensed my discomfort and took my hand. "Here, I'll walk you home."

"How about your parents – aren't they going to be worried too?"

"My parents?" He rubbed a hand through his hair – a habit probably picked up by his brother, Sora. "They don't really care. "

"Roxas…"

"Look, it doesn't matter okay?" He started walking fast, half dragging me along. For a brief second, I saw the film of tears in his eyes. "I mean – all they care is Sora and I'm just a nobody to them. They don't care if I come home late or if I come home at all."

I stopped, pulling him back. "You know that is not true Roxas," I said fiercely. "Your parents do care."

We were standing in the middle of the crosswalk. The light was about to turn red, but we were still standing there just looking at each other, unable to say anything. Just then, in the far off distance, I heard a car rumble and smelled rubber burning on concrete as it sped past cars, forcing them to yield. For a split second, I thought of running, but I was too slow. The glare of headlights blinded me, making me stop to shield my eyes with my hands. Something hard pushed me away. I landed on the gutter before I heard a screech of brakes that barely muffled the dull crash of a body upon metal.

It all happened too fast.

All I remember in the next hour is sitting next to him, his body twisted and broken, blood streaming from his chest and head in impossible amounts. I remembered trying to stop the endless flow with my hands, trying to fix him, but all is too late. The blood streamed through my fingers, stained my clothes and my skin and those eyes are still wide open, the blue dimming into a duller color, signs of a life being extinguished.

In the ambulance, they tried to revive him. They attached him to an IV, placed an oxygen mask over his mouth and when his pulse faded they started performing CPR. I remembered whispering, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" over and over again in a mantra, watching his open eyes flicker side to side in an attempt to see his surroundings.

By the time they reached the hospital, he is pronounced brain-dead. His parents were already there, holding themselves and weeping as he is wheeled in. In the emergency room, he is attached to a series of machines that pump and make strange clicking sounds. They are the only thing that keeps him alive, that keeps him breathing. But the Roxas I knew was gone. I was just looking at an empty shell.

"He's gone," I said simply, brushing away the blond hair that covered his face. I want to weep, but everything is trapped inside and I cannot release the flood of waters that is slowly building up.

Later, his parents decided that it was better to let him go – that even if they let the machines continue working he would never wake up. He would never be the same. His mother placed a hand on my shoulder. "I think it is best if you turned it off. He would have wanted you to."

Five minutes later, I walked up to him for the last time, watching for any signs of life that might appear on his face. _If he moves, I swear I won't turn it off,_ I thought. Another five minutes passed and his facial expression didn't change.

I turned around, took a deep breath and flipped off the control switch that kept the machines working. Slowly, the clicking and the hums of the machines stopped and his heartbeat faded all together.

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Time passes only because it remains a constant -- a _must._ You cannot reverse time, you cannot stop it. It treads along in its own beaten path, a lonely stranger walking towards a unknown destination, not knowing the right time to stop to acknowlege its surroundings.

For a long time, I got myself in the habit of counting the days, the minutes and the seconds he was gone. In my room, there is a calender that hangs on my doorknob with the dates crossed out and a scrawl of words written across the blank spaces. For a long time, this was what kept me sane. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because once you fall into a routine, a constant circle that never stops, you hopelessly get attached to it. To break that cycle, to break those routines -- it disturbs the rhythm of your life, the steady order you thought you would always follow.

I still have the calenders. I still count the days, the minutes and the seconds he is not in my life. I cross the dates out with a red sharpie and when the date finally arrives at the day of his death, I drive to the flower shop that used to be the coffee shop, buy a couple of white lilies and scatter them across the pavement where his blood might have spilled, where I had landed and escaped from death -- but for a terrible price.

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**September 10, 2001.**

I am twenty-two years old. I graduated out of college not too long ago and now, I work in the World Trade Center -- where I discuss possible architectural projects with marketers and company owners who want to expand their business. It is a decent job. At least I have enough money to pay for my shopping excursions and my apartment rent. Maybe in another year or so, I'll get myself a condo and in another five years, a house.

I still think about blond hair, blue eyes and checkerboard shirts but the memories -- they don't hurt me anymore. Or at least they don't hurt me _now. _For some strange reason, when I came home from work, I walked right into my room, gathered the calenders I use to count the days he is gone and ripped them out, one by one. The next thing I knew, I was bending over my trash can, dumping away shreds of paper. I felt that I didn't need the calenders anymore, that it was time that I break out of the constant cycles I've built my life around.

**September 11, 2001.**

I wake up in the morning to go to Starbucks for my daily cup of coffee. Once I have gotten my cup of coffee, I take the metro train to work. On the ride, I think about possible negotiation tactics I could use to convince a business owner to open another company in Seattle and have me to be as the architect.

When the metro train halts at my stop, I make my way through crowds of people in order to get out of the subway. I walk two blocks to get to the World Trade Center and for a moment, I stood there, hand poised to open the door, thinking to myself:

"Everything must change."


End file.
